Improving surface integrity in orthogonal machining of hardened AISI 52100 steel by modeling white and dark layers formation

In machining of hard parts, surface integrity is one of the most specified customer requirements. Often, the major indications of surface integrity are surface roughness and residual stresses. However, the material microstructure also changes in machined-hardened steels, and it must be taken into account for improving product performance. In this paper, a hardness-based flow stress and an empirical model for describing the white and dark layers formation were developed and implemented in a FE code. The proposed model was validated by comparing the predicted results with the experimental evidences.